Grantland Hall of Fame: The Men Who Camped Out for Twilight: A Photo Essay
Every week, Big Lead Sports’ staff peruses all 200 million articles on Grantland and picks their favorites. Welcome to the induction ceremony for Big Lead Sports’ Grantland Hall of Fame.
Yesterday, I got into a brief Twitter discussion about the difference between slideshows and photo essays with Dave Lozo of NHL.com. Lozo tweeted:
Grantland does “photo essays.” Bleacher Report does “slide shows.” I don’t see “much of a difference.”
I pointed out that slide shows are created to maximize page views for a single post. He responded by saying that readers don’t think like that. That is true. The only people that get bent out of shape over Bleacher Report’s slide shows and other Google-baiting tactics are bloggers. When Grantland does a photo essay, it’s the same thing, except it doesn’t force you to click “next” 15 times.
Some of you who are familiar with both sites in this comparative analysis might think that the quality of the photo essay on Bill Simmons’ Grantland would be far superior to that of some teenager putting together a couple pictures of Tim Tebow with funny captions. Those of you who think that would be very, very wrong.
The Grantland photo essay that spurred this debate is entitled The Men Who Camped Out For Twilight: A Photo Essay. The post was a part of the Hollywood Prospectus pop-culture blog on Grantland and was written by Lane Brown. If nothing else, the post explores that “little extra creative leeway” Simmons talked about in his Grantland introduction all those months ago.
Apparently, Grantland is across the street from wherever the Twilight premiere was so there were people camping out for a week, obstructing Bill Simmons’ pristine view of Hollywood. Reporters were dispatched. Answers would be had.
Who would give up a week’s worth of work or school, sleep, and indoor plumbing just to watch a few pale actors walk a red carpet? Yesterday, armed with a camera and a tape recorder, we decided to find out. Unfortunately, Twilight stars Peter Facinelli and Jackson Rathbone were visiting at the same time, so many of the female fans were preoccupied. Luckily, there were plenty of men around to answer our questions.
What follows are twenty photographs. Women are visible in 13 of those photographs. Women are posing for the camera in 9 of those photographs. Women are quoted in three of those photographs. I realize this is one of the stupidest things I could possible nitpick over, but what is the point?
More sample text:
Kim (right): “My dog’s name is Bella. She’s our tent city mascot. I got here on Wednesday at noon. I made it a vacation. I’m a nurse. A year and a half ago, I found out when the premiere was going to be, so I asked for the time off.”
They literally asked people why they were there. This isn’t satire or humor. It is apparently informational. I have no good reason to even publish this post, but I’m doing it anyway. I got way too far down the rabbit hole to delete this from drafts. The combination of Twilight and Grantland? Shit. This is the most Google-riffic post I could write this week without working “Did Jerry Sandusky shower with Justin Bieber?”
The title of the article explicitly states “The Men Who Camped Out To See Twilight.” Writing this and reading that article have zapped my will to live. I’m a mess as I attempt to finish writing about this. It just makes me so angry and sad at the same time. And it shouldn’t because I don’t read Grantland anymore. I’ve moved on. But stupid Lozo had to bring my attention to something stupid Grantland had done. There is no difference between anything that exists online. We are all awful. No matter if we are putting together a gallery, a slide show, a photo essay or complaining about them.
This has been the first installment of the Grantland Hall of Fame. Whenever something especially Mount Rushmore-ish shows up on the pages of Grantland, we’ll be ranting about it here. Unless we don’t because what’s the point?